1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to forming panoramic images.
2. Background
It is often the case that one would like to have an image of a facade of an entire street or length of street that is beyond the field of view of a single camera. However, existing systems for viewing such long scenes can be improved. For example, the current method for browsing street side imagery in Google Streetview is to view a sequence of discrete sets of 360 degree panoramas, or “bubbles”. Each bubble is a realistic depiction of what the user would see standing at the location where the images were taken, but it is difficult to get a sense of the overall surroundings using such bubbles. Looking down the street, the view of facades of buildings quickly become severely shortened or otherwise deformed. Several other representations are available for browsing street side images more continuously. These include pushbroom panoramas, multiperspective panoramas constructed from dense video input or sparse sets of handheld photos, and dynamically constructed view-dependent panoramas constructed from Google Streetview-like inputs. Yet other representations include static street side panoramas that use a single planar proxy and variable width vertical strips which do not account for vertical variation in scene depth.
Therefore, improved methods and systems for panoramic images of long scenes are desired.